Total Pageviews

Saturday, June 8, 2013

The Real Purpose of Education

The
Real Purpose of Education

Education---like democracy, free markets, freedom
of the press, and "universal human rights" --- is one
of those subjects whose virtue is considered self-evident. So
is the superiority of the industrially advanced countries in attaining
them. Consequently, any package that arrives with one of these
magic labels on it, automatically qualifies for the "green
channel" at our entry ports. No questions asked. This uncritical
acceptance has severely crippled our discussion of all these vital
topics. For example in education most of our discussion centers
around literacy statistics and the need to have so many graduates,
masters, Phd’s, and so many professionals --- engineers,
doctors, etc.--- in a given country based on the standards in
the industrially advanced countries. The central issue of curriculum,
and even more fundamental issue of the purpose of education normally
do not attract our attention; they have already been decided by
the "advanced’ countries for us and our job is only
to follow in their footsteps to achieve their level of progress.
Indeed they have. In the "first" world, education has
become an extension of the capitalist system. Its purpose is to
provide qualified workforce for its machinery of production and
eager consumers for its products. Stated in a more polished form,
the purpose of education is to provide for the economic prosperity
of a country. Similarly on a personal level today the purpose
of education is to be able to earn a respectable living.
While earning halal living and providing for the economic well
being of a country are certainly important Islamic goals as well,
the linking of education to financial goals is extremely unfortunate.
It turns the centers of learning into mere vocational centers
in their outlook and spirit. It degrades education and through
it the society.
To bring home the pivotal but forgotten role of education we need
to recall that there is a fundamental difference between human
beings and animals. Instincts and physical needs alone can bring
ants, bees, or herds of beasts together to live in a perfectly
functioning animal society. Human beings do not function that
way. They are not constrained by nature to follow only those ways
that are necessary for the harmonious operation of their society.
If they are to form a viable, thriving society, they must chose
to do so. What drives that choice is the sharing of common goals,
beliefs, values and outlook on life. Without a common framework
binding its members, a human society cannot continue to exist;
it will disintegrate and be absorbed by other societies. Further,
the society must ensure that the common ground will continue to
hold from generation to generation. This is the real purpose of
education. The education system of a society produces the citizens
and leaders needed for the smooth operation of that society, now
and into the future. Its state of health or sickness translates
directly into the health or sickness of the society that it is
meant to serve.
Today we find many internal problems --- corruption, injustice,
oppression, crippling poverty --- everywhere we turn in the Muslim
world. If we think about it, we may realize that most of these
problems are man-made. Which is another way of saying that they
are largely traceable, directly or indirectly, to the education
system that produced the people who perpetuate the problems. The
rulers who sell out to foreign powers and subjugate their people;
the bureaucrats who enforce laws based on injustice; the generals
who wage war against their own people; the businessmen who exploit
and cheat; the journalists who lie, sensationalize, and promote
indecencies, they are all educated people, in many cases "highly"
educated people. Their education was meant to prepare them for
the roles they are playing in real life. And it has, although
in a very unexpected way!
The problem plagues all layers of society. Why are Muslim communities
in the grip of so much materialism today? What should we expect
when our entire education system is preaching the gospel of materialism?
Why have we effectively relegated Islam to a small inconsequential
quarter in our public life? Because that is precisely where our
secular education system has put it. Why in our behavior toward
each other we see so little display of Islamic manners and morals?
Because our imported education system is devoid of all moral training.
Why our societies are sick? Because our education system is sick.
This is the real crisis of education. Before we got into this
mess by importing from the Colonial powers what was current and
popular, education in our societies was always the means of nurturing
the human being. Moral training, tarbiya, was always an inalienable
part of it. The ustaz,(teacher), was not just a lecturer or mere
professional, but a mentor and moral guide. We remembered the
hadith then, "No father has given a greater gift to his children
than good moral training." [Tirmidhi]. Our education system
was informed by this hadith. Our darul-ulooms still maintain that
tradition but the number of students who pass through their gates
is minuscule compared to the secular schools.
In the U.S. and Europe, the schools were started by the church.
Later as forces of capitalism overtook them, they molded them
into their image. Moral training was a casualty of that takeover.
But capitalism and their political economy did need people trained
to work under these systems. So citizenship training was retained
as an important, though diminishing, component of the curriculum---
a religion-free subset of the moral training it displaced. Whatever
civility we see here is largely a result of that leftover component.
The imported versions in the Muslim countries, though, had even
that component filtered out. And the results are visible.
We can solve our problem once we realize our mistakes. The first
purpose of our education system must be to produce qualified citizens
and leaders for the Islamic society. Tarbiya, real Islamic moral
training, must be an integral part of it. This must be the soul
of our education, not a ceremonial husk. All plans for improving
our education will be totally useless unless they are based on
a full understanding of this key fact. This requires revamping
our curricula, rewriting our textbooks, retraining our teachers,
and realizing that we must do all this ourselves. We do have a
rich history of doing it. Are we finally willing to turn to our
own in-house treasures to redo education the way it should always
have been?